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I have a confession to make.
Jul. 11th, 2002 09:34 amI don’t like it here any more.
No, that’s not entirely right. I don’t like it here and I’m not sure I ever did. It’s not the Red Cross work that’s giving me problems, not primarily; it’s just the whole thing. I’ve been working in Texas since the day I arrived, 6 July 2002. I work from 7:30 AM to 6, 6:30, 7, or on one memorable occasion 7:40 PM (although that day my shift started at 9). I would really like to go home now. . . I don’t feel right here, I don’t feel right about here. I have always prided myself on my adaptability, my ability to feel at home in any place or almost any situation. Whether it’s being able to blend into the crowds on the streets of Manhattan or squat on an overturned caulk bucket and talk happily with a West Virginia farmer whose bull is scaring the bejeezus out of pretty much everybody else in the field, or moving through Toronto or Vancouver Island without being instantly tagged as an American, I like to think I can adapt to nearly any place.
But here? Here I don’t know what it is. Maybe that it’s an area where the pawnshops outnumber the bookstores six to one (three to one if you include the Bible Supply Shop, the only bookstore I have found in this mall). I doubt that’s it, I’ve been in pawn-intensive areas before. Maybe it’s that EVERY SINGLE PERSON HERE really does have a drawl, except for our local volunteers who have Spanish-influenced accents instead. Maybe it’s the food – I’ve never gotten along with Mexican food, and the non-Mexican food around here seems to mostly be pretty standard Middle America stuff, like when I was in Wisconsin. (Only with less cheese.) Maybe – and this is exceedingly likely – maybe it’s just that I have PMS and I’ve been away from home since 27 June and in that time I’ve had one day off, 4 July.
But I don’t feel right here. Except for the time a few days ago when I was walking through the Rivercenter Mall and then through About Australia, I have felt like an alien here. The shops are full of stuff I’m not interested in buying. The kind of shops I normally frequent are almost nowhere to be found. The food I know from home either isn’t present or gets made so differently that I just have to shake my head and walk away (Side Wok Cafe makes decent fried rice, but otherwise it’s kind of hard to find how its food relates at all to what they had at Empire Szechuan). The candies are different, with almost no mint anything in any of the candy aisles. The Eckerd’s sells rosaries and Infant of Prague baby Jesus statues, which is not itself a bad thing, it’s just another sign that I’m not anywhere like home. They actually wear cowboy hats here, all the time, except possibly for when they’re eating. That’s why I bought the hat at About Australia – I wanted to at least try to feel like I was fitting in, but not fit in too far. The people are pretty nice and all, and friendly, but. . . despite wanting to fit in, despite being the same hair colouration and a lot of the same physical features as an amazing number of the locals, when I walk down the street in Market Square or through this mall, I feel more blatantly obviously not-belonging than I ever did in New York City’s Chinatown. I don’t know why.
I’m going to try and handle things here, I really am. I hope it’ll pass. I have off tomorrow; I have to call my office and walk my substitute through a procedure I never trained her in (long story short: I dreaded teaching her all the different possibilities for checks that come in sans remit slip and have done them myself after she finishes the rest). Then I’m going to the mall and the movies. Maybe things will be better on Saturday, after a break like that. Maybe I’ll just have to keep up going to the hot tub every night. That seems to help.
I just hope it gets better. I’ve got ten to fourteen days left to go.
No, that’s not entirely right. I don’t like it here and I’m not sure I ever did. It’s not the Red Cross work that’s giving me problems, not primarily; it’s just the whole thing. I’ve been working in Texas since the day I arrived, 6 July 2002. I work from 7:30 AM to 6, 6:30, 7, or on one memorable occasion 7:40 PM (although that day my shift started at 9). I would really like to go home now. . . I don’t feel right here, I don’t feel right about here. I have always prided myself on my adaptability, my ability to feel at home in any place or almost any situation. Whether it’s being able to blend into the crowds on the streets of Manhattan or squat on an overturned caulk bucket and talk happily with a West Virginia farmer whose bull is scaring the bejeezus out of pretty much everybody else in the field, or moving through Toronto or Vancouver Island without being instantly tagged as an American, I like to think I can adapt to nearly any place.
But here? Here I don’t know what it is. Maybe that it’s an area where the pawnshops outnumber the bookstores six to one (three to one if you include the Bible Supply Shop, the only bookstore I have found in this mall). I doubt that’s it, I’ve been in pawn-intensive areas before. Maybe it’s that EVERY SINGLE PERSON HERE really does have a drawl, except for our local volunteers who have Spanish-influenced accents instead. Maybe it’s the food – I’ve never gotten along with Mexican food, and the non-Mexican food around here seems to mostly be pretty standard Middle America stuff, like when I was in Wisconsin. (Only with less cheese.) Maybe – and this is exceedingly likely – maybe it’s just that I have PMS and I’ve been away from home since 27 June and in that time I’ve had one day off, 4 July.
But I don’t feel right here. Except for the time a few days ago when I was walking through the Rivercenter Mall and then through About Australia, I have felt like an alien here. The shops are full of stuff I’m not interested in buying. The kind of shops I normally frequent are almost nowhere to be found. The food I know from home either isn’t present or gets made so differently that I just have to shake my head and walk away (Side Wok Cafe makes decent fried rice, but otherwise it’s kind of hard to find how its food relates at all to what they had at Empire Szechuan). The candies are different, with almost no mint anything in any of the candy aisles. The Eckerd’s sells rosaries and Infant of Prague baby Jesus statues, which is not itself a bad thing, it’s just another sign that I’m not anywhere like home. They actually wear cowboy hats here, all the time, except possibly for when they’re eating. That’s why I bought the hat at About Australia – I wanted to at least try to feel like I was fitting in, but not fit in too far. The people are pretty nice and all, and friendly, but. . . despite wanting to fit in, despite being the same hair colouration and a lot of the same physical features as an amazing number of the locals, when I walk down the street in Market Square or through this mall, I feel more blatantly obviously not-belonging than I ever did in New York City’s Chinatown. I don’t know why.
I’m going to try and handle things here, I really am. I hope it’ll pass. I have off tomorrow; I have to call my office and walk my substitute through a procedure I never trained her in (long story short: I dreaded teaching her all the different possibilities for checks that come in sans remit slip and have done them myself after she finishes the rest). Then I’m going to the mall and the movies. Maybe things will be better on Saturday, after a break like that. Maybe I’ll just have to keep up going to the hot tub every night. That seems to help.
I just hope it gets better. I’ve got ten to fourteen days left to go.
